Finally, they decided to chase their original eastern target. On radar, the supercell — the term for an especially severe storm with a persistent deep rotating updraft — looked like “an absolute beast,” Gold remarked. A few minutes later, as we sped past the other cars on the road to try to catch up with the storm, and as Hill reminded us to tighten our seat belts, Gold made a foreboding comment. “We should probably accept the reality,” he said, “that the storm is probably going to produce a big tornado before we get there.”

Why do people chase storms as recreation? The film “Twister” may have something to do with it. That 1996 movie practically made a fetish of tornado chasing and drew thousands of tourists to the plains. “Twister” clogged the highways, “but it was also a very good thing for the business,” Hill said.

Gold started Silver Lining Tours one year after “Twister.” Hill joined later and now directs most of the six-day and 10-day tours. They also take tourists into the eyes of hurricanes along the Gulf Coast each year.

Hill, who first chased in 1985, says he has spotted 433 tornadoes, a tally he says he is trying to have verified as a Guinness World Record. “Seeing the raw power of a tornado, seeing the majesty of a supercell storm rotating — it's something nobody has ever conquered,” he said over a slice of pizza in Scott City.

We had awoken that morning in Lamar, Colo., on the southeastern edge of the state. Taking over the breakfast nook of the Days Inn, the chasers held a weather briefing and identified the day's target area in central Kansas. Each day is spent refining the target area; it is akin to a series of concentric circles homing in on the spot with the highest potential for severe storms.

A day earlier, we darted along dirt roads in Colorado, eventually coming upon a severe storm 40 miles from the nearest highway. As we emptied out of the vans and watched the clouds above us swirl ominously, two locals shouted approvingly from their pickup. “Good hunting,” yelled one. But despite the sighting of what the chasers called an “almost-nado” — a funnel cloud — the day seemed a bit of a bust.

Gold and Hill were determined to do better the next day. As the two men headed east in separate vans Monday morning, they studied wind patterns and satellite pictures on their laptops and swapped thoughts over two-way radio with a sports-minded shorthand, complete with talk of “playing” storms and “winning strategies.”

In Scott City, we refueled the convoy, and then we waited — something that the group, most of whom were return visitors, seemed to accept. They read, listened to music, shared storm stories and ate junk food. Some huddled around Gold and Hill as a storm course was plotted. Sitting in an orange booth at the Dairy Queen, Karen Goodhelpsen, who lives in Edmonton, Alberta, and works for IBM, said the chase could become addicting for the vans of tourists who fanned out west each spring. “It's like chasing anything elusive,” she said. “You want to get that one thing, and that elusive thing is the tornado.”